St. Francisville is a small town in West Feliciana Parish, about 110 miles northwest of New Orleans and 25 miles north of Baton Rouge, perched on a bluff above the Mississippi. It is not a place for nightlife or shopping malls — it is a place to slow down and look at what the antebellum South actually built, in architecture and in landscape, before the Civil War ended it.
The plantation houses in and around St. Francisville are among the finest surviving examples in the United States. Rosedown Plantation has formal gardens modelled after those at Versailles — sixty acres of original nineteenth-century plantings, including ancient live oaks and camellias — that are considered some of the best preserved in the South. The Myrtles, draped in cast-iron lace and Spanish moss, bills itself as one of America's most haunted houses; the evening ghost tour is atmospheric even for sceptics, and the B&B draws guests who want to spend the night inside the legend. Oakley House, set in what is now Audubon State Historic Site, is where John James Audubon worked as a tutor in 1821 and painted thirty-two of the birds that appeared in Birds of America; the surrounding woodland still holds many of the species he documented.
The town itself is walkable and quiet, with antique shops, a few cafes, and a historic district centred on Royal Street and Ferdinand Street. Visitors who want to tour more than one plantation house should plan on a full day. Accommodation options are limited but include the Myrtles B&B and a handful of small guesthouses, which makes it a natural overnight stop if you are driving between New Orleans and Natchez.